"Decker said she expects the results to be ‘between the mid-point and the low end of the range’ of expectations."

Timing-wise, this quarter is being set up for a, "do over"… that’s why the stock is dropping.

Worse, it runs counter to the, "everything-is-great-and-we’re-so-excited-to-talk-about-it-during-our-upcoming-earnings-call" verbiage Semel was inappropriately bragging about at last week’s shareholder meeting.

A double burn.

At least that’s the way Goldman and Jefferies probably saw it as they downgraded YHOO this morning.

A triple and quadruple burn.

Hard for a stock to go up in the face of that stuff.

P.S. If YHOO misses by a penny again, betcha Semel’s comp package is responsible for that miss… again.

From "Absolutely" — Semel’s immediate answer to a shareholder question whether he still had fire in his belly — to his, "I pushed the board to do this sooner rather than later" type comments in yesterday’s press meeting…

…and that was, Jerry Yang, co-founder of YHOO, was challenged to do something similar… fill the most desperately needed position at Yahoo, which is that of CTO/technologist/visionary.

Unbelievably, when a shareholder suggested this, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel treated the question like it was a joke, saying something like, "well, sure, Jerry, what do you think, I’m not sure you want that career path, do you?" or something equally as inappropriately sarcastic.

Turns out that was a great suggestion.

And, if Semel was a great CEO, he would have already lobbied Jerry to fill that role. Duh.

And, if Jerry is a great founder, he would be seriously considering leaping back into the fight right now… he is, after all, a respected technologist and a real voice in the industry, just what Yahoo doctor ordered.